January 25, 2014

Swiss Spring for Syrian Refugees Passes

Switzerland facilitated family reunification for Syrians in
September. So far, more than 1,100 Syrian refugees have benefited from
the programme, while thousands are waiting at Swiss embassies in the
region, hoping for a similar chance. Surprised by these numbers,
Switzerland put an end to the programme.

Several European countries responded to
an appeal by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last
summer to admit Syrian refugees. Switzerland announced it would accept
500 “especially vulnerable refugees” over three years.

Further, the country that hosts about 2,000 citizens of Syrian origin
pledged to open its borders for their relatives. By the end of
November, Swiss embassies in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan had granted
1,600 Syrians a three-month entry visa.

At least 1,100 of these have already travelled to Switzerland. A
further 5,000 Syrians have applied for appointments at Swiss embassies
to file similar visa requests.

Either Swiss authorities were surprised by these numbers, or
considered their humanitarian action short-lived. Already in early
November, they introduced bureaucratic hurdles: Swiss-based Syrians who
had invited their relatives now needed to meet certain financial
requirements.

“Looking at the size of an average Syrian family, these requirements
constitute a killer criteria,” said Beat Meiner, secretary-general of
the Swiss Refugee Council (SFH). “Few of the Swiss-based Syrians have
enough money to clear these hurdles.”

Meiner’s warnings fell on deaf ears. Even worse, a month later Swiss
Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga cancelled the family reunification
programme entirely. “We assume that most of those Syrians who are
entitled to apply for entry visas and face immediate distress have made
use of our eased visa requirements,” she argued.

Ashti Amir, a Kurdish Syrian who fled to Switzerland for political
reasons more than a decade ago and now runs the charity SyriAid, has a
different perspective. Since September, he managed to get the families
of one of his brothers and sisters to Switzerland. Amir told IPS that he
still had two brothers and his parents back home in Aleppo and wanted
to get them to Switzerland, too.

“Escaping from there and travelling to an embassy abroad is not only
difficult, but very costly,” he said. Amir knows dozens of other
compatriots who have relatives in danger in Syria whom they want to
rescue.

Another sister of his as well as a sister-in-law are stranded in
Istanbul with their families, waiting for an entry visa to Switzerland.
They had applied for an appointment before Switzerland cancelled its
reunification programme, and Amir is optimistic that they’ll finally be
granted a visa.

“But if not: where should they go? Their long stay in Turkey has eaten up their savings.”

SFH’s Beat Meiner says that many Syrians have embarked on a dangerous
trip to Swiss embassies in the Middle East, assuming they can
successfully apply for an entry visa there. “Some of them are blocked
now: they may neither come to Switzerland, nor return to Syria,” he
says.

He’s convinced that Swiss humanitarian action could have been
prolonged and that considerably more human lives could have been saved.

Besides that, Switzerland also hesitates to treat about 2,000 asylum
requests by Syrians who had fled to the country individually rather than
as families. Some of them have been waiting three to four years for a
decision.

IPS met Ziad Ali and his family in central Switzerland. Originally
from Malikiyah in the northeast of Syria, Ali moved to Damascus as a
youth, where he earned his living as a taxi driver. “As a Kurd in Syria,
you took any job you may get anywhere,” he says.

Before he fled the country, Ali worked in Idlib region as a gardener.
He was arrested at a demonstration in
Qamishli and then tortured in a
prison in Deir az-Zour in Syria.

After his release, escaping the country appeared to him the only
option. His wife and their two children reached Switzerland in June
2011, while Ali followed in January 2012.

Ali says the fate of his sister and his father, who were arrested by
the Syrian regime in 2011, is constantly on his mind. He hasn’t heard
from them since then.

His daughter Fatima and his son Mohamed go to school locally and
already speak better German than Kurdish. A year ago, their youngest
brother Azad was born. The family lives in a barracks established for
asylum-seekers, occupying three rooms.

Their asylum request is still in limbo, leaving the family in constant insecurity about their destiny.

Moreno Casasola, secretary-general of the refugee rights organisation
Solidarité sans Frontières, says that asylum requests of Syrians are
mostly put aside by the Federal Office for Migration. Like any other
European country, Switzerland fears that answering asylum requests
positively would attract even more Syrian refugees.

Federal Office for Migration spokesperson Michael Glauser
acknowledges that asylum requests of Syrians aren’t treated with
priority. He denies, however, any decision moratorium. Glauser asserts
that Syrian asylum-seekers enjoy Switzerland’s protection – and for the
moment haven’t been sent back to Syria.

Ziad Ali and his family, along with other Syrian asylum-seekers, have
protested in front of the Federal Office for Migration in Bern,
demanding a speedy decision on their request. Getting at least temporary
official admission would give them a perspective for the next few years
and facilitate hunting for a job.

Despite his desperation, Ziad Ali hopes for a positive outcome. He
says he wouldn’t mind returning to Syria once the war has ended, if
Kurds were treated fairly. “But the longer my children live here, the
more difficult it would be for them to return.”